Research & Innovation Library

The American Academy of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery Foundation recently revised the pain management recommendations related to tonsillectomy, and made other key guideline changes to help reduce complications and enable faster recoveries.

"The 2019 guideline update aims to improve pain management, and outline key changes like recommending tonsillectomy for children with obstructive sleep apnea," says Ron Mitchell, M.D., Division Director of Ear, Nose and Throat at Children's Health℠ and Professor at UT Southwestern. Dr. Mitchell chaired the guideline update group.

Around half of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients don’t respond to today’s treatments and just 20 percent achieve remission. That's why researchers at Children's Health℠ and UT Southwestern are spearheading a push to find genetic variants associated with IBD. They’ve identified genetic alterations involved in regulating type I interferon response, and are opening the door to a new era of precision medicine for IBD.

“I envision a future where we can test patients, narrow the mechanism behind their intestinal inflammation to a specific genetic variant and then match them with therapies that give them a better chance of overcoming it,” says Luis Sifuentes-Dominguez, M.D., a Pediatric Gastroenterologist at Children’s Health and Assistant Professor at UT Southwestern.

Transcatheter pulmonary valve replacement (TPVR) has revolutionized care for many children with heart problems, but one group is often left out: patients with dilated right ventricular outflow tracts. Traditionally, open-heart surgery has been their only option because their outflow tracts are too big to accommodate transcatheter valves. But this may soon change thanks to the Edwards Alterra Adaptive Prestent – a self-expanding, stent-like device that creates a “landing zone” for transcatheter valves.

Children’s Health℠ is one of four sites in a Phase I trial of the innovative device, which is used in combination with the SAPIEN 3 Transcatheter Heart Valve System. Preliminary results are promising, with many children.

In a state as large as Texas, it would be inefficient – and nearly impossible – to transfer every neonate to a Level IV NICU. That’s why Children’s Health℠ and UT Southwestern developed one of the nation’s most comprehensive TeleNICU programs. Along the way, we solved thorny compliance and legal problems, built our own telemedicine platform and created a model that keeps costs low for partner hospitals.

Our program is helping neonates stay closer to home, lowering health care costs and letting partner hospitals keep more neonatal patients in-house – and it could be a model for other pediatric centers to follow.

Caring for children with type 1 diabetes can be challenging for parents, especially when their child has a cold or the flu. At Children’s Health℠, we recently launched a mobile app that empowers parents to more easily handle sick-day care on their own.

The app, called Diabetes Advisor, uses blood sugar readings and other real-time data to help families calculate insulin doses and fluid intake, without talking to a doctor or nurse.